Victims of the Equifax data hack, please sit tight. I’d hate to see people paying money for the wrong thing. That’s already happening to people like, John, in Texas, who ended up regretting his purchase of a $19.95 credit monitoring subscription. Also, I think eventually the right thing is going to happen and consumers will be able to freeze their credit reports—for free. There is, finally, momentum in that direction. If you are sure you don’t need […]
Some time ago, the popular show Mythbusters wanted to find out if the Lone Ranger was right about silver bullets being better than lead ones. Turns out silver bullets are actually slower and less accurate. When it comes to cybersecurity, quick-fix silver bullets are also less effective than tried-and-true approaches. The most effective cybersecurity strategies begin with two certainties: mistakes will be made, and breaches like the one that hit Equifax will keep happening. The 143 million consumers exposed […]
Everyone knows a mosquito bite doesn’t really start itching until the damage has already been done, and the same goes for many kinds of identity-related crimes. With news of the recent Equifax breach continuing to surface, what do you need to know now to limit your exposure? Equifax has estimated the hack impacts 143 million people, mostly in the United States. (That’s almost half the US population!) The thieves stole names, Social Security numbers, birth […]
IT systems have never been more powerful or accessible to businesses. However, the scope and scale of cyber crimes continues to outpace tech innovation. For years, the challenge for internal IT and security teams has been to use existing company data to construct an integrated picture of oddities and unexpected actions on their network. Recent advancements in machine learning and behavior or anomaly-based analytics that leverage existing enterprise logs have provided security teams with much more accurate intelligence […]
The number of machine-to-machine connected devices—the Internet of Things—is growing faster than the world population. Cisco estimates that M2M connections will grow from 4.9 billion in 2015 to 12.8 billion by 2020 (estimated world population in 2020: 7.7 billion). Growth in IoT security expenditures is as robust. Gartner puts endpoint IoT security spending at $1,183 billion in 2015, and estimates $3,010 billion in 2020. “Everybody’s realizing that IoT security is a serious problem,” says Xu Zou, CEO […]
Ransomware continues to pose a potent threat to individuals and, increasingly, to companies. What’s worse, all signs point to ransomware attacks escalating the rest of this year and into 2017. How bad is it? Arctic Wolf Networks has measured a 433 percent spike in ransomware attacks over the past year, and the FBI says victims paid up $209 million in the first quarter of 2016, up from $24 million in all of 2015. And that only […]
Nearly all of the largest organizations throughout the world had their credentials exposed by cyber criminals last year, a new study has found. The study, done by London- and San Francisco-based Digital Shadows, which provides clients with information about their external digital risks, determined that 97 percent of the world’s largest 1,000 organizations had credentials exposed. The credentials are valuable to cyber criminals who “are increasingly turning to credential stuffing tools,” Digital Shadows officials say, […]
While the writing has been on the wall for a long time, last Friday it was in the news wires when a new strain of ransomware called WannaCrypt raged like an out-of-control wildfire across Europe and Asia, ultimately impacting computers in 150 countries. For many affected by this hack, a few hundred dollars in ransom money is a pittance when compared to the cost of hiring someone to attempt the recovery of your files after […]
Don’t expect the financial services industry to ever willingly disclose how much it loses to cyber thieves on an annual basis. But make no mistake determined, well-funded hacking rings continue to breach banking systems on a regular basis. And they continue to inflict material losses–likely at a scale the general public would find shocking. Breach attempts against financial services firms occurs 24/7/365, says Brian Soldato, senior product management director at NSS Labs, an Austin, Tex.-based […]
TV show leak is good reminder for everyone to put their digital lives in order The premature release of the new season of “Orange is the New Black” by hackers is no big deal. Really. You can see why producers made the calculation that stopping the “hack” was not even worth the alleged $66,000 or so the hackers demanded as “ransom,” according to TorrentFreak. Why? Online show fans are very familiar with the restraint required […]
